White Priestess
by Shiroi Iyasu
Summary: Inspired by Shikigami's Repeated. 'She hated the color white. White meant the end, even if she was a Priestess. They always say that it's purity. Yeah right.' One-shot.


Right umm... what do I say? Well, this is just my first fic for TotW:RM. It will centre on the Female Descender, instead of the usual male. Inspired by Shikigami's '_Repeated_', which prompted me to write this.

Edit : Made a few changes here and there, removed and added some stuff... I think it looks better actually.

Enjoy?

* * *

White.

White...

And she hated white.

She used to love the color at first. Her clothes were always that stainless, pure light as her staff radiated a bright golden air, sparkles of mana flowing to her companions as she healed them, protected them, strengthened them. Her voice would echo softly as she uttered the incantation, rising to a cry as she rose the staff and spoke the spell name. She was always there, always chanting a support spell in the back. She would always be there, standing on the edges of the battlefield where it was safe for her. There was no other place where she would be.

No other place. No one assumed she would leave so soon. They thought she was strong.

Yet, they were wrong, and it was a mistake on their part. How the others took it, the fact of how close they were to the Descender was what determined it. Genis Sage showed his grief openly, while Kratos Aurion was subtle with his disbelief. Senel Coolidge was merely disappointed, while Stahn Ailerion had vainly tried to keep up his, and everyone else's spirits.

But those emotions of pain faded away. Literally. They disappeared, forcefully erased from the pages of history.

_"Hey! Wake up! Come on, wake up!"_

Time forced the world to come back to the beginning.

She continued to wear her white robes, untouched from the horrors of life's cruelty. She was certainly more confused, but nevertheless, she continued to heal, to protect, to strengthen her friends. It was just a matter of rebuilding your steps so that you could resume your path. Surely, she would return and finish her goal.

Her eyes snapped open, her face frozen within shock as she saw Mormo floating there, at the roots of the World Tree. This wasn't the Weald. And what in front of her wasn't the pink-haired swordswoman, former Descender of Pasca, named Kanonno. It wasn't the Descender that had impaled her with an Arte that had carelessly been deflected into her direction, and left out all possibilities of survival.

"Oh, good, you're awake!"

It happened again. She didn't think a third time would happen.

And the fact gave her nightmares. Nightmares that made her whimper in her sleep, mumbling words that grew loud before turning into a scream of that could be so easily defined as 'bloody hell'. The reason was always different. Sometimes it was because she kept dying - _dying dying dying_, the words mercilessly repeated itself all the time - in them, yet everyone simply forgot about her every time, every nightmare, it happened. And it hurt. It hurt worse than any attack she had taken.

Every scream would make everyone come rushing in, not caring for the creaking hinges of her room door, and find the Descender rolled into a ball, shaking furiously with fear. No one could understand her behavior, unable to see how dark her heart had been scarred. The blade had ran deep into her tainted memories and broken soul that the eleventh time it happened, she barely made it into her journey - which she so clearly remembered was on her way to what would be the battle with Ganser - before she picked up her staff, recalling her carving skills and made the blunt edge sharp.

"What are you doing?" she heard Lloyd call, frowning. She didn't answer, continuing to carve away at the wooden staff. When she placed the small pocket knife away, she smiled grimly at her work, painfully remembering who it was that taught her to carve.

It didn't help any better that he didn't even remember that he did.

She stood up, gathering everyone's attention for one last time. Well, in her case, it wouldn't be the last. Where _was_ last at this point? She would keep coming. Again and again, again reappearing anew at the edges of the battlefield, healing, protecting, strengthening everyone.

She dashed off, her speed suddenly akin to a burst of light. It took only seconds to realise that she had just ran off into the deep corridors of the Orphic Maze, and they followed.

They found her at a purple warp, standing just outside its eerily spiraling white lights. Her hands were shaking a little as she looked at it, but she simply forced a smile and turned her head to them.

"Ganser's just beyond this warp. Take a straight path once you come the Third Floor, and to another warp like this. Take it. Kanonno and the other captives will be on the other side, ready to be sacrificed to the Devourer."

The information surprised them. How did she know that? No one knew, but she did, because she was once there. She was once there, standing on the edges of the battlefield, chanting spell after spell, using _Inspect Magic _to reveal his weaknesses and how far his endurance was. Always standing to the walls, healing, protecting and strengthening everyone.

"He has no weaknesses, but two Greater Knights will be there. Do your best, okay?" The smile had turned from forced to grim. Her eyes became dull, darker. Before, they used to be a shining silver, but that was only in the first time. Slowly, they took a shade of black. First unseen, and now grey. One day, she had mused once, they would turn black. Empty, and black.

Just like her dead soul.

"W-What do you mean...?" Arche dreaded the answer. The Descender's smile fell. She closed her eyes, turning completely towards them while that staff stood behind her back, angled so that a careless motion could easily stab that sharpened end into her fragile body. She didn't care at all for herself though. Care seemed to lose its meaning, so so _so _quickly.

"What are you going to do?" the half-elf asked, more worried, more desperate, and certainly evident was fear. An unconscious fear. The fear of loss, the fear of tragedy. The fear losing someone important. She only smiled.

"Nothing too important," her voice was airy. "But the question is, what will you do to prevent it?"

_There isn't a thing you can do to stop this. Never was._

But she didn't care for that one fact. Care lost its meaning years ago, or at least, that's what it feels. Years years years _years_. So many years, so many days, so much time that it feels like nothing actually moves anymore.

And she hated it. She hated feeling like this. She hated being a person who looked so predictable. Everyone thinks that someone of her 'pure' and 'divine' heart could seemingly not hate, could not be sad, could not show anger of grief. Why? _Why._ Why was she given such a set personality? She wanted to be able to cry, to be able to show annoyance, to pass insults among others when wanted to. But no, because that wasn't what she was supposed to do.

A Priestess was kind, gentle and forgiving. Was she any of that?

Once, she saw a doll in the shops of Doplund. Silvery strings attached to metallic rings, it was as if someone could control its limbs and make its actions. A puppet, the shopkeeper said. That was what it was.

That was what she was. A pretty little puppet that was made to save the world because the puppeteer _said so_. She had no more use than for that, and after it happened, she would be discarded, thrown back into the Tree until her purpose – her existence - was needed.

She wondered at some point, what would it be like she didn't go back to the Tree? To be with the others?

This was her cruel answer.

* * *

Each time grew shorter and shorter. She couldn't recall when, but the moment she had woken up - the moment she was used to and the one she absolutely loathed - she simply slapped the Yaoon Descender away and gave him the premature death instead. It was wrong of her. She wasn't supposed to do that. She actually had no intentions of doing that. Rage consumed her at some point that she gave up, and once she was free of Mormo's prying eyes, she'd waltz into a dark alley and wait for those drunk old men from the late-night tavern come by and spot her there, looking so weak and so vulnerable to an attack.

But she grew tired of it. Tired, tired, _tired_.

Everything was always the same, always was. There was nothing that stopped it. Die, live, die, live. That was the routine. She didn't have to even wait each time. As said, each incarnation was shorter than the first. Sometimes, it was just the reason of her empty resolve that led to her death. There had been that one, when she saved Kanonno, she simply walked away without another word, forcefully pushing the flying Descender into the pink-haired girl's arms before she did. They would follow her, naturally, but a cry of _Sacred Shine_ fell and the world was engulfed in a white light, meant to hit its caster, not them.

She didn't care though. Care lost its meaning thousands of her lifetimes ago.

Yet, she'd always cry for it. She'd always cry for all of this to stop. To stop, and go back to what it should be. She wanted to be in Gavada, fighting Aurora, or maybe in the Weald, fighting Kanonno instead. Why couldn't even her wishes be granted? Was she just a person who made those desires bloom, a person who didn't care if her own were made but found happiness in others'?

She was a living person, wasn't she?

Deep within, she already knew the answer.

She had become too broken to be living anymore. Always, _always_. Always, she would be sitting in the depths of the departed, the only soul that hadn't passed into neither heaven or hell, nor a soul that lingered with the living. She was just there. Just there, just forgotten. A soul that was given no judgment because of one single mistake of being forgotten.

_Please... make it stop..._

_**Make it stop!**_

* * *

She heard a strange ringing her ears, a soft voice singing a peaceful melody as she felt mana seep into her. It sounded a lot like Tear and her Hymns. She liked her Hymns. While not in a language she would ever learn before returning to the Tree, she loved to sing by them, either in battle or when they were traversing an area and the Seventh Fonist (as was the term for healers were in their world, Auldrant) had begun to hum the melodies one by one.

_"-Ryuo Zue Rei Va Zue Rei... Revitalize!"_ came the spell name, and the voice vanished at once.

She slowly opened her eyes, meeting a beige ceiling with dim lights hanging above. A face or two hovered nearby, which she quickly identified as Tear and Mormo. She blinked, taking in that new information, and found with a shocking amount of surprise that there was _no memory that matched it_.

"You're awake!" Mormo gleeful chirped as she pushed herself up, ignoring that numb feeling in her right arm. He landed beside her, large aqua eyes staring up at her with relief. "You took a really bad blow back there with Aurora."

"W..." Suddenly, she found herself speechless. Just momentarily. "...What about the others?"

"They're fine," Tear answered. "While the battle had become rough when you fell, we managed to defeat her. You, however, had been in critical condition throughout its total duration, which made me worried if you would survive long enough for me to heal you."

"If she's awake and breathing right now, doesn't that mean she is?" came Luke's voice as he walked in. He looked down at the Descender, having a concerned expression though that concern was hidden by an annoyed look. "You really got us worried there! I nearly thought you were going to die!"

"And it was because of your carelessness that made her cover for that near-fatal attack," the soldier chided the snobby noble with a deep frown. "If you weren't brash enough to go head-straight into that fight, she could have been alive. We were just lucky that we made it."

"Argh, shut up! You're not my mother!"

The Descender quietly watched the exchange of colorful words and witty counters. A gloved hand rose to her mouth, hiding away a smile and muffling her giggles. When it fell back to her side, the smile was still there, small, but there. She didn't care if what she experienced during her blackout was a dream, or if this itself was a dream. At least, she should enjoy the lit world around her, just this once. Just this once, she should honestly smile and radiate an aura of happiness. She wanted to do that, just this once. Even if everything would disappear the moment she blinked.

But she didn't care.

Care had lost its meaning seconds ago when she idly flicked her long nails against her scar-battered skin, earning herself a light sting.

* * *

As you've seen, the Descender is of the Healer class. That's what mine is.

Review please. No flames.

~Shiroi


End file.
